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Harold Cotton, Hat Blocker

Harold Cotton speaks about his life as a shoe-shine man, hat-blocker, and owner of Bob’s Hat Shop in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Recorded in Greensboro, NC. Premiered August 18, 1996, on Weekend Edition Sunday.

This documentary comes from Sound Portraits Productions, a mission-driven independent production company that was created by Dave Isay in 1994. Sound Portraits was the predecessor to StoryCorps and was dedicated to telling stories that brought neglected American voices to a national audience.

Credits

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Transcript

HAROLD C. COTTON(HC) and CUSTOMER

HC: My name is Harold C. Cotton, but a lot of people look up at the name and see me in here and they call me Bob. But I answer to that, too, until they get to know me on an intimate basis, then they start calling me Cotton. But calling me Bob doesn’t bother me because that’s been the trade name for close to sixty years.

The person that opened it up, his name was Robert Taylor. He opened up in 1935, and I started working for him in 1937. I was in high school, shining shoes on the street. So I came in here one night and I asked him in a joking way, ”What about a job?” He said, ”Can you shine shoes?” I said, ”Yes, I can.” So he got on that back seat and told me to shine his shoes. And when I finished shining his shoes, he said, ”When you want to come to work?” And I said, ”Right now!” He said, ”Well you come in next week.” So I been in and out of here ever since. That was in 1937.

So this has been a very interesting corner. A lot of things have happened here. They used to fight, get drunk, make love. You name it they did it. (Laughs) And it was just interesting. People from all walks of life was coming in here then; they’re coming in here now. All walks of life.

[Shop door jingles]

HC: Come on in the house, come on in the house.

CUSTOMER: Todd over here?

HC: Like I said, we have people of all walks of life coming in here. You see, when this place — even though it’s been owned by blacks ever since it’s been in business — at one time blacks could not sit on the shine stand. They had to go back in the back, and we would shine their shoes when we didn’t have nothing to do out here. And then what would happen is that if they didn’t want to get up on the stand back there, they would have to sit down on the chair, right there, and take the shoes off and get them shined. But we had regular customers even coming at that, because that’s the way it was at that particular time.

And then what happened was during the civil rights struggle and the Woolworth thing. They was demonstrating downtown, and a black Marine happened to come in the door while they was demonstrating. We hadn’t integrated then, and he said, ”Can I get a shine?” I said, ”Have a seat.” So he got up on there, and I shined his shoes. So when he left, the friend that I had with me — had been with me for about fifteen years — he’s dead now — I told him, I said, ”From now on,” I said, ”anybody comes in here they can get up on the stand, whether they close us up or not.” I didn’t have one bit of trouble. Never had any problem at all. Not at all.